English: William Collins reading the New Testament, from the bas-relief by Flaxman in Chichester Cathedral. A cast of this relief can be found in the UCL Flaxman Gallery.

Identifier: illustratedbiogr00sava (find matches)
Title: Illustrated biography; or, Memoirs of the great and the good of all nations and all times; comprising sketches of eminent statesmen, philosophers, heroes, artists, reformers, philanthropists, mechanics, navigators, authors, poets, divines, soldiers, savans, etc
Year: 1856 (1850s)
Authors: Savage, Charles C., 1820-1907
Subjects: Biography
Publisher: Buffalo, Phinney & Co.
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ane-lagh and the theatres ; he mingled with expensive and dissipated society. Hehad hitherto seen too little of the world ; he now saw too much: and thus, wemay conclude, passed on the first few months of his London life, during whichfame receded as penury drew nigh, and debts accumulated faster than poems.Some of the memoirs of the Biographia Britannica, it appears, were tohave been written by him, and were, in fact shown to Mr. Ragsdale in embryo.In addition to these evidences of industry, he wrote about the same period hisimperishable Odes, the labor expended on which we can but imperfectly esti-mate in the exquisite results bequeathed to us, even although we know thathis MS, bears the marks of repeated corrections, that he was perpetuallychanging his epithets, and that he was constantly burning what he had written.The odes were published, and their reception was such,^hat the miserableauthor purchased the unsold copies and burnt them; and not only them, but on 284 WILLIAM COLLINS.
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William Collins.—From the Bas-Relief, by Flaxman, in Chichester Cathedral. WILLIAM COLLINS. 285 the same funeral pile were offered up and destroyed all that had made life en-durable to the man, and a still more awful sacrifice, all that made up the powerand genius of the poet. From this event we conceive must be dated the com-mencement of the malady which left its victim, through the remainder of life,the most fearful spectacle the world can present—the wreck of genius. Thehighest condition of humanity, reduced to the lowest, and most horrible—thepoet transformed to the madman. On the death of Thomson, in 1748, he wrotethe ode to his memory, and soon after went abroad to his uncle, then in Flan-ders, who soon after died and left to him and his sisters (the elder Collinsand his wife were both dead) his property. Collins received about two thou-sand pounds. The sum remaining in his possession after he had repaid thebookseller the amount advanced for the proposed translation of Ari

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